


our love was made for movie screens

by opensummer



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Canon-Typical Violence, Everybody Dies, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, The Author Regrets Everything, Trip Lives, Unhealthy Relationships, You Have Been Warned, otp: pieces of a puzzle, season 1 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 18:57:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6919189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opensummer/pseuds/opensummer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The hunger games fusion where nobody is happy and almost everybody dies. </p>
<p>(“Five bucks” Skye says “that the boy from District Two wins.”)</p>
            </blockquote>





	our love was made for movie screens

**Author's Note:**

> Don't say I didn't warn you.

Skye’s fifteen when the district escort pulls a slip of paper out and announces Mary Brody as Tribute. Mary is twelve, tiny, pale and shaking when the crowd parts around her so they can send her to her death. She volunteers in her place and crowd goes still, goes quiet.  
  
She makes her way to the stage and when asked tells them her name is Skye, no last.  
  
The district has the grace not to cheer.  
  


* * *

  
  
Skye's really good with computers. Like freakishly good for somebody who doesn’t have continuous access. When she came back for the Brody's with a new name, nine years old and angry, she broke into the matrons office and changed her papers.  
  
Skye appears on everything the capital has on her and no one calls by the name they gave her anymore. In any other circumstances it might have gotten her adopted and moved to the Capitol. They're not above stealing talent when they find it. But now it's coming out because of the games and it makes them look foolish, weak. She's be among the first to die in the arena for this.  
  


* * *

  
  
Melinda May watches the reaping with perfect ambivalence, hands clasped behind her back to hide the shaking.  
  
“I can't mentor her.” She tells Coulson as soon as they are alone, for the given value of the word. Victors are never unmonitored, and he nods and says “We’ll switch this time.”  
  


* * *

  
  
They called Melinda May, the Cavalry, some reference to prewar movies, evoking images of men galloping in to save the day. In her games she partnered up with a girl, two weeks past twelve and tiny.  
  
She was taken by the career pack when May was out scouting on the first day post-bloodbath and she carved her way through twelve others to get to her. Just in time to hold her as she died. When the girl had rattled out her last breath, Melinda May won. She took her games in just 48 hours and come out of them a mess.  
  
Phil Coulson held her hand and told her to let the girl go.  
  


* * *

  
  
Miles Lydon is her district partner. Which cuts the number of people who give a shit down to zero. Her only visitor is Mary Brody who hugs her tight and tells her to come home, not that Skye’s ever had one of those. She’s going to die in the Arena for the Capitol’s amusement.  
  
They board a train and it goes too fast towards the capital.  She slips in next to Miles and holds his hand under they table as Coulson tells they’ll be mentored separately.  
  
(The deal with her and Miles goes like this- they dated for about five minutes six months ago until he told her he loved her and she promptly dumped him. This should have been his last reaping and he was in line to take over as an engineer on the dam. Engineers and mayor are the only two jobs in District Five that never go hungry.)  
  
(He was going to ask her out again after he was out. He thinks she would have said yes. Sometimes she thought that too.)  
  
Now they’re going to die together so Skye holds his hand under the table and watches the other Reapings.  
  
“Five bucks” she says “that the boy from District Two wins.”  
  
Miles flinches.  
  


* * *

  
  
In District Three Jemma Simmons gets called up first and she bites her tongue to keep from screaming. Leopold Fitz is only a minute behind her. They hold hands on stage, take their visits together. Their parents look at their clasped hands and swallow down orders to come home.  
  
They say be safe instead.  
  


* * *

  
  
In the Capitol they strip Skye bare, poke and prod, nattering cheerfully about how brave she must be. How kind, volunteering for that poor girl. She charms them, the way she’s been charming adults for years.  
  
Her designer’s a man called Trip. The concept- District Five creates power, creates light. They coat her in a luminescent powder, paint designs on her face, neck, shoulders. Her dress contains constellations of light, and they wind her hair up with cables of color that shift with the dress. When they’re done, Trip turns her towards the mirror and snaps his fingers to turn off the lights.  
  
Skye glows in front of the mirrors. She gives off bright white light, burning everything else away.  
  
“They’ll love me.” she says.  
  
“That’s the point.” Trip tells her.  
  
The cameras don’t cut away from her once the entire chariot ride.  
  


* * *

  
  
In District Two Grant Ward positions himself in the front row of the eighteen years old, dead center for when it comes time to volunteer. On stage, John Garrett catches his eye and grins, affable and empty. What’s left of his family doesn’t come to say goodbye.  
  
He didn’t expect they would.  
  


* * *

  
  
In training, Skye picks up weapons for the first time. She is a shockingly good shot for somebody who has never held a gun before. Not that the skill will help her in the Arena. She was seven the last time a tribute was allowed a gun.  
  
She focuses on traps, on learning how to feed herself, camouflage and how to take down someone bigger than her. Skye’s not going to win through brawn.  
  
(Skye is not going to win.)  
  
The first day she tags along with Fitz and Simmons because they’re learning the same things she’s trying to. Fitz shows her how to deactivate a land mine and she shows them how to gut a wire trap to turn it into something even more lethal. She sits with them at lunch, Miles hovering at the edge, trying to draw her attention. They laugh, open and honest and draw the eyes of the other tributes.  
  
She can pinpoint the moment they remember their circumstances by the way their smiles falter simultaneously.  
  
The boy from District Two, Grant Ward, eats lunch alone, two tables over and as far away from the career pack as possible. She catches him watching them laugh, and stares until he looks away.  
  
On the second day the girl from District One- Lorelei picks a fight with Ward’s district partner over a knife. He breaks up it and she flirts aggressively. He brushes her off.  
  
Skye asks for and gets an alliance with FitzSimmons.  
  
The third day at lunch, Skye plops down next to Grant Ward and orders him to smile.  
  
“What.”  
  
“Smile.” She says around a bite of burger. Skye’s never eaten so well.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because I’m going to die and I think you probably have a nice smile.”  
  
He doesn’t so much smile as he does grimace.  
  
“A for effort, Robot.” She snarks and swipes his fries. Skye’s always been impulsive.    
  


* * *

  
  
Ward takes a ten in training, Fitzsimmons pull fours, deliberately low, and she manages an eight for rewiring a wire trap. Miles brings in a seven and sulks for the rest of the night.  
  
Both of District Ones Tributes- Ian Quinn and Lorelei pull tens. Everybody else falls where Coulson predicts until the girl from Eleven- Raina brings in a ten.  
  


* * *

  
  
In interviews they light her up with darker tones, more shade the light, the best impression of a night sky.  
  
Ian Quinn charms, Lorelei seduces, Ward plays killing machine to the crowd and his partner falls short of the standard Lorelei set for seduction. Fitz and Simmons tell the same story two different ways, best friends in a tragedy. Skye is convinced that the tributes from District Four are actually insane and then it’s her turn.  
  
Skye’s always been good with words, sure of her ability to play the sympathies of her audience. Tonight she hits every note, charms and flirts her way through every demographic, throws in a joke about her relationship with Miles to undercut what she knows is coming.  
  
They love her. It’s a heady feeling.  
  
Three minutes later Miles is confessing his love to the cameras and the room goes mad.  
  
She focuses on keeping her smile even and loses track of the rest of the interviews.      
  


* * *

  
  
That night, when she can’t sleep she goes down to the training room. She’s hoping to beat on a punching bags until she passes out but apparently she wasn’t the only one with that idea. Ward is taking apart a bag in the corner.  
  
She ignores him, hopes he’ll do the same, runs through the routine they were taught halfheartedly. The tap on her shoulder comes as a surprise and she swings at him before she thinks about it. He catches the punch, ignores her apology.  
  
She pulls away, turns to leave when he says. “You are going to die and you’re treating it like a joke.”  
  
“Sorry I’m not naturally whatever it is you are.”  
  
“You think this is natural?”  
  
“I think you’ve been training for this moment since you were eight.” She says. “Maybe younger.”  
  
He goes still. “Come here. I’m going to teach you something you can use.”  
  
He shows her how the place to strike on somebody’s wrist to disarm them, the twist to catch a knife, how to flip it back so you drive it into your attackers guts. He makes her repeat the series until she has it down.    
  
“You’re picking this up quickly.” He says.  
  
“Was that a compliment Grant Ward?”  
  
He ducks his head.  
  
“A compliment and a smile.” She’s laughing. “Did that hurt?”  
  


* * *

  
  
The canons signal the start of the Hunger Games and Skye snatches a knife and a pack and disappears into the jungle they’ve been dropped in. She meets Fitz and Simmons on the far side of the Cornucopia twenty minutes later and they head north, at a quickstep. The bloodbath is already dying out.  
  
They make camp in a clearing they rig with the explosives Simmons grabbed before they ran. It’s a good spot, water nearby and high enough up that they should see people coming. They’ll have to keep moving in the morning but for now they settle in. The backpack has two sleeping bags and they settle who has which watch with rock paper scissors.  
  
Skye wins and takes first.  
  
The Capitol’s anthem plays and the dead are projected. The girl from Two, Miles, then the girl from Six, the boy from Seven, both from Eight, Nine, and Ten, the boy from Twelve.  Eleven dead. They agreed back in the training center that the alliance would end when they made it to the top eight.  
  
A cannon jerks them out of sleep in the middle of the night and they pack up and keep moving north. (Twelve.)  
  
They stop at midday to escape the heat, strip down to their underwear and soak in the stream to cool off before lying on the banks for a nap. It's Simmons turn to watch and she spends it practicing climbing the trees around them.  
  


* * *

  
  
This is deliberate; they hear Ward coming.  
  
“I’d like to sign up. Numbers matter” He says, offering up food and weapons like they are gifts. Here, nothing is.  
  
_For you_ , he does not say. Tellingly, FitzSimmons look to Skye before they let him join in.  
  


* * *

  
  
Thirteen dead and Skye’s right hand never leaves the knife at her waist. Here’s the problem- she likes them.  
  


* * *

  
  
Fifteen dead, nine left and Skye’s near climbing out of her skin. Fitz watches her drum a beat into their supplies and tells her to check the trapline.  
  


* * *

  
  
So it goes like this- the cannon fires and Skye sprints for camp, abandoning the rabbit she’s skinning.  
  
The cannon fires (again) and Skye stumbles over Fitz’s body. His throats been slashed, quick and clean. Simmon’s death was uglier.     
  
Jemma must have fought. Jemma must have seen her killer coming. Her murderer drowned her.  
  
The cannon fires (three times a charm) and Skye clutches her knife, convinced that whoever killed her team is coming back. She packs hastily, water, food, weapons, in that order.  
  
She doesn’t pause for breath until she’s three miles downwind.  
  
That night the Capitol projects the boy from Four, Fitz and Simmons. Skye doesn’t know what to think of that.  
  
(She does. She’s just ashamed of the reaction.)  
  
(Ward would’t-)  
  
(Wouldn’t he?)  
  


* * *

  
  
The commentators drive themselves around the wall, trying to figure out Wards betrayal. Why he would choose to break the alliance and why he would let Skye go. One of the comments online calls it love, and two hours later that’s all they can discuss.  
  
They pull up the footage of her in that dress- glowing, spilt the screen with her and Ward- the way he glances back when the crowds goes mad for her. The double take, almost comical in retrospect. Ward is riveted. And they did’t notice for nearly two weeks.  
  
The Capitol replays the interviews and watch him watch her, and spilt the screen again with the bloodbath- Ward slitting Miles’s throat. They bring in a psychologist to make it official before they call the mentors for interviews.  
  


* * *

  
  
Skye drives the knife into the girl from Fours side, again. Petra collapses over her.  
  
Skye leaves her for a minute. Catches her breath and pulls the knife free with a snick. Her shoulder’s bleeding and someone is crashing through the woods. Skye is pretty certain this is the part where she dies. She will not give the Capitol the satisfaction of seeing her cry.  
  
“Ward.” She says over the knife.  
  
“Skye.” He lowers his sword. “You ok?”  
  
He approaches her, hands up and she skitters away, clutching her shoulder, knife still between them.  
  
“Hey truce? Just for the night.” She hesitates. He offers “I’ve got food.”  
  
“Truce breaks half an hour after we both leave camp.” She agrees and lets him look at her shoulder.  
  


* * *

  
  
This has been engineered by the gamemakers, pushing them into the same area with a threat. She’d shouted when the girl from Four found her and they carried the sound to his ears just to watch his reaction. It played well with the story they were weaving, the way he dropped everything and ran to her.  
  


* * *

  
  
Ward binds her shoulder with the supplies from the silvery parachute that drops in between them. It’s her first gift from a sponsor and he tells her that sword he’s carrying now was his last; three total. The Capitol adores his cheekbones.  
  
“Expensive.” Skye comments and he puts too much pressure her shoulder. She flinches under his hands.  
  
She builds the fire as he secures the area.  
  
"You've gotten good at that."  
  
"I needed to be." She says.  
  
A long pause. The Capitol watches him watch her.  
  
"You caught them right? Whoever it was that killed Fitz and Simmons."  
  
"Yes." He lies. "The boy from Four."  
  
"What happened?"  
  
“I killed him,” Grant Ward says. “because he killed FitzSimmons.”  
  
Sky almost believes him.  
  
"You don't deserve to die here." He adds abruptly.  
  
"Try telling me that again if we make it to the top two."  
  


* * *

  
  
She sleeps with a hand on her knife and he doesn’t sleep at all.  
  
It’s convenient when Ian Quinn crashes into their campsite, foaming a bit at the mouth. He’s got a pistol and Skye’s wide open. Ian Quinn manages two in her chest before Ward breaks his hands first. It’s his knees next, the soft part of his neck, in between the back and head. Ward finishes him with a headshot.  
  
(It’s too quick for him.)  
  
(Ward would have liked to pummel him to death. He might have enjoyed it.)  
  
(Priorities.)  
  


* * *

  
  
“That makes three, for the people counting out home.” The announcers say and cut straight back to Skye, dying.  
  


* * *

  
  
Skye spits blood and the word _please_ is her last conscious thought.  
  
Skye sits on the edge of death for the three days it takes Coulson to raise the money to save her. Ward does his best, clumsily taping the wound closed.    
  
Back in the Capitol people rush to donate. Skye is not so attractive this way, pale and choking on blood.  
  
The medicine is a miracle. She’s propped against a tree eight hours later, flirting weakly.  
  
Ward has his shirt off.  
  


* * *

  
  
He kisses her.  
  
He kisses her, with a hand in her hair and another underneath her chin and they sigh back in the Capitol about first loves and the things that ruin you.  
  


* * *

  
  
They go after Raina and she’s got a survivors slyness and a heavy resignation to fate and she’s too fast the first night. Ward holds Skye’s hand, helps her over hazards, leans down and kisses her whenever he can.  
  
On the second night Ward slips a knife into Raina’s stomach and she talks about monsters.    
  


* * *

  
  
On the third night Skye says _put your money where your mouth is?_ and laughs, like she's made a joke.

Grant Ward offers her Ian Quinn’s gun grip first. It has two bullets left, one in the chamber and one in the clip.  
  
He kisses her and says, “I am never going to lie to you again.”  
  
And then he tells her how he killed Fitz and Simmons.  
  
“It has to be your choice.” He says.  
  
The sun is rising before she checks the gun. Slow. Methodical. She separates the parts and puts them back together.  
  
Says, “I don’t think I can forgive you.”  
  


* * *

  
  
The Gamemakers do nothing. They know a good show when they see one.  
  


* * *

  
  
Skye shoots him, twice in the head and than raises the gun to her own. It clicks empty and she swears, long and loud. The sound is swallowed up by the hovercraft that's come to take her home.  
  


* * *

  
  
Trip covers her in light again for this. It makes it harder to see her face.  
  
President Pierce perches the crown on her head (a tiara made of starlight) and she watches Ward slaughter the people she loved.  
  
Skye does not cry.  
  
(Nobody is willing to forgive her for that.)

**Author's Note:**

> I made a thing on [tumblr.](http://openemptysummer.tumblr.com/post/144694081641/inspiration-for-skye-in-our-love-was-made-for)
> 
> Also I have a complete list of [tributes](http://openemptysummer.tumblr.com/post/159555931011/tribute-list) if anybody is interested.


End file.
